The War On Drugs Essay

The War On Drugs Essay

Essay Preview

The “War on Drugs” is the name given to the battle of prohibition that the United States has been fighting for over forty years. And it has been America’s longest war. The “war” was officially declared by President Richard Nixon in the 1970’s due to the abuse of illegitimate drugs. Nixon claimed it as “public enemy number one” and enacted laws to fight the importation of narcotics. The United States’ War on Drugs began in response to cocaine trafficking in the late 1980’s. As the war continues to go on, winning it hardly seems feasible. As stated by NewsHour, the National Office of Drug Control Policy spends approximately nineteen billion dollars a year trying to stop the drug trade. The expenses shoot up, indirectly, through crime, hospital stays and such. However, people spend approximately three times as much money buying drugs as the government spends fighting against them. How can this war be won when the government has to spend so much money combating in opposition to it??

On top of the ridiculous cost of all the factors of the war, the availability of the illegal drugs comp...

Need Writing Help?

- Throughout U.S governmental history, policies have been known to affect the way of life and every aspect. The topic it choose to research is about “The War on Drugs”, the impact policies have on society and if it does help the public or tend to extent social inequality. This topic is very important to me in the sense that, I look at the community I live and see how drugs have affected people lifes, broken up families and also destroyed the community itself. I wanted to know if the “war on drugs” stop our neighborhood from being flooded with drugs or it just over shadow the real problems that needs to be tackled.... [tags: War on Drugs Essays]

- The War on Drugs is Failing “Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance… for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and make a crime out of things that are not a crime. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principle upon which our government was founded” Abraham Lincoln On January 16, 1920 the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified by thirty-six states and became part of the Constitution. The intention of this new amendment was to lower alcohol consumption by Americans.... [tags: George Bush's War on Drugs]

- Despite an estimated $1 trillion spent by the United States on the “War on Drugs”, statistics from the US Department of Justice (2010) has confirmed that the usage of drugs has not changed over the past 10 years. Approximately $350 billion is spent per year on the “war on drugs”, only $7 billion is spent on prevention programs by the federal government. The war on drugs is more heavily focused on how to fight crime, instead of how to prevent it. Crime prevention methods may not be immediate, but it is the most efficient and effective long-term.... [tags: Drugs, argumentative, persuasive]

- The “War on Drugs” is the name given to the battle of prohibition that the United States has been fighting for over forty years. And it has been America’s longest war. The “war” was officially declared by President Richard Nixon in the 1970’s due to the abuse of illegitimate drugs. Nixon claimed it as “public enemy number one” and enacted laws to fight the importation of narcotics. The United States’ War on Drugs began in response to cocaine trafficking in the late 1980’s. As the war continues to go on, winning it hardly seems feasible.... [tags: Drugs, argumentative, persuasive]

- The War on Drugs The world has many different issues, and without them the world would be a perfect place. An issue that causes a lot of controversy is drug abuse. Though the world can never be a perfect place, humans still need to do our best to make in inhabitable as possible, and drugs cause a lot of harm towards humans. Therefore, it is my belief that the first thing that needs to be fixed should be drugs and their abuse. Many possible solutions to this problem exist. Drugs come from a wide variety of different places.... [tags: Drug Abuse, Illegal Drugs, Plants, Chemicals]

- In 2009, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while on a state visit to Mexico said something no other political figure had been courageous enough to admit at that point – that the war on drug is a failure. In her own words, she said: “Clearly, what we have been doing has not worked… our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade and our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these [Cartels] criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians.” Taking a closer look at the economic forces that have been driving the supply end of this business as well as evaluating the economic costs of the war will give us a b... [tags: economic costs of drug prohibition]

- The war on drugs began in the United States in 1971 when President Richard Nixon declared war. President Nixon increased the number of federal drug control agencies, increased mandatory sentences for drug offenders, and utilized no-knock warrants in attempt to get the problem under control. It has been over forty years since President Nixon declared a war on drugs. Did America win the war on drugs. Is it time to legalize illicit drugs in this country. What are other countries doing in reference to drugs.... [tags: United States, Richard Nixon, war]

- Throughout history, Americans have fought many enemies that threaten the safety of our great Nation and provided aid and resources to our partnering countries in their time of despair. However, the consequences were substantial, countless brave men and women lost their lives defending the freedom of Americans. Today American’s fight a different kind of war; it is a war without a clear enemy or end in sight. Today, America fights a War on Drugs. In the early 1970s, the War on Drugs was still relatively new and drug smuggling continued, going virtually unimpeded through the U.S.... [tags: Illicit Drugs]

- Throughout history drugs have been nothing but a social problem, a burden per say. From Edgar Allen Poe smoking opium in an attempt to make his poetry more creative, to Vietnam soldiers coming back from the war addicted to heroin. Narcotics was not a serious issue at the time, only a small hand full of people were actually doing the drugs, and they were just simply looked down upon. It was not until the late nineteen sixties when recreational drug use became fashionable among young, white, middle class American citizens, that the United States Government “put it’s foot down”.... [tags: Illegal Drugs Narcotics essays research papers]

- War on Drugs = War on Terrorism??. The United States’ new claim in today’s world of propaganda and mind-warping media is that The War on Terrorism = The War on Drugs. Recently simple anti-drug slogans have been manipulated into aggressively and often erroneously exaggerated media assaults. (planetpapers.com) The United States claims that each person can help fight terrorism by choosing not to buy or use illicit drugs, and the government itself can help fight terrorism by implementing a more effective War on Drugs throughout the country.... [tags: Essays Papers]